An astonishing coming-of-middle-age debut about an Ahkwesáhsne man's reluctant return home, Old School Indian is a striking exploration of the resonance of love and family, culture and history.
Forty-three-year-old Abe Jacobs has been told by his doctors that he's dying-and fast. Having exhausted his doctors' regimens, he begins to contemplate the one path he thought he'd never consider: a healing at the hands of his great uncle Budge Billings. His uncle still lives on the Ahkwesáhsne reservation where Abe was raised, so more than two decades after leaving, Abe reluctantly returns home.
Budge, a wry, unceremonious, recovered alcoholic, is not the least bit sentimental about his gift. Which is good, because Abe's last-ditch attempt to be healed is just that-a fragile hope, one of which he is thoroughly skeptical. But no healing is possible without hope or knowing oneself. To find both faith and himself again, Abe must confront how leaving the reservation at eighteen has affected him, and the loves and fears that have kept him far from home ever since.
Delivered with crackling wit and wildly inventive linguistic turns by Abe's wise-cracking, would-be-poet alter-ego, Dominick Deer Woods,Old School Indian possesses the insight into the contemporary indigenous experience of Tommy Orange's There There and Louise Erdrich's The Sentence, and a singularity of voice that evokes other unforgettable protagonists like Ocean Vuong's Little Dog and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead.
"An astonishing coming-of-middle-age debut about an Ahkwesâahsne man's reluctant return home, Old School Indian is a striking exploration of the resonance of love and family, culture and history. Abe Jacobs is Kanien'kehâa: ka from Ahkwesâahsne-that's People of the Flint, from Where the Partridge Drums-or, if you ask a white dude, a Mohawk Indian from the Saint Regis Tribe. Whichever way you cut it-and Dominick Deer Woods, our irreverent, wisecracking narrator, cuts it six ways to Sunday-at eighteen Abe left the reservation where he was raised and never looked back. Now forty-three, Abe is suffering from a rare disease-one his doctors in Miami believe will kill him. Running from his diagnosis and a failing marriage, Abe returns to the Rez, where he's convinced to undergo a healing at the hands of his Great Uncle Budge. But this ain't Sweet Home Ahkwesâahsne, as Dominick might say, and Budge-a wry recovered alcoholic prone to wearing band t-shirts featuring pot-bellied naked dudes-isn't the least bit precious about his gift. Which is good, because his time off Rez has made Abe a thorough skeptic. However, to heal Abe will have to undertake a revelatory journey, confronting the parts of himself he's hidden ever since he left home and learning to cultivate hope, even at his darkest hour. Delivered with crackling wit and wildly inventive linguistic turns, Old School Indian is a striking exploration of the power and secrets of family, the capacity for healing and catharsis, and the ripple effects of history and culture"--
